Iran intelligence 'incorrect' and the media won't cover it

AFP
Monday, February 26, 2007

Most US intelligence on Iran shared with the International Atomic Energy Agency has proved to be inaccurate and failed to lead to discoveries of a smoking gun inside the Islamic Republic, The Los Angeles Times reported on its website on Saturday.

Citing unnamed diplomats working in Vienna, the newspaper said the CIA and other Western intelligence services have been providing sensitive information to the IAEA since 2002.

But none of the tips about Iran's suspected secret weapons sites provided clear evidence that the Islamic Republic is developing a nuclear arms arsenal, the report said.

"Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that's come to us has proved to be wrong," the paper quotes a senior IAEA diplomat as saying.

Another official described the agency's intelligence stream as "very cold now" because "so little panned out," The Times reported.

US officials privately acknowledge that much of their evidence on Iran's nuclear programs remains ambiguous, fragmented and difficult to prove, the report said.

The IAEA has its own concerns about Iran.

In November 2005, UN inspectors discovered a 15-page document in Tehran that showed how to form highly enriched uranium into the configuration needed for the core of a nuclear bomb, The Times said.

Iran said the paper came from Pakistan, but has rebuffed IAEA requests to let inspectors take or copy it for further analysis.

However, diplomats working for the IAEA were less convinced in 2005 by documents recovered by US intelligence from a laptop computer apparently stolen from Iran, the paper said.

The documents included detailed designs to upgrade ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads, drawings for subterranean testing of high explosives, and two pages describing research into uranium tetra-fluoride, known as "green salt," which is used during uranium enrichment.

The Times said IAEA officials remain suspicious of the information in part because most of the papers are in English rather than Farsi.